Meanderings
by Yumemisama
Summary: [CLAMP Campus Detectives] Some musings on what "Kaichou" might really mean.


Hewwo. Insert standard disclaimer here, these lovely people aren't mine, they belong to whoever they belong to, more than likely CLAMP and Asuka etc etc etc. I'm getting no money for this and had none to begin with, so please don't sue. Don't ask me why I wrote this; it's 4:10am as I finish this and I wouldn't be able to tell you at this point anyway. The flashback bits are from the third CCD tankoubon, the third story, "Escape to Victory", and the particular bits of dialogue are from the CLAMP Mailing List translation. T'ank 'oo for doing it for me so I didn't have to sit down with my dictionaries and pathetic knowledge of Japanese to figure out what's going on. ^_^  
  
I didn't meeeeeeeeeean to write one long ramble. Really. And it was supposed to wind up mostly from Kaichou's POV too. Whoops. ^^;; I had no idea I could manage to write seven pages on Takamura Suoh....  
  
* * *  
  
Takamura Suoh had absolutely no idea how Nokoru had managed to convince his parents to let him come. There was never a question that the young man could convince them, it was just a matter of being out of the room getting tea during the very moment that Nokoru had said those few magic words to his mother to make an overseas jaunt of indeterminate length with the most adult supervision available being one very enthusiastic twelve-year-old Imonoyama a positively splendid idea. Ijyuin didn't even bother attempting to figure any of it out; he merely accepted the fact that Kaichou had superhuman charming powers and left it at that. Akira seemed to look at life much more simply in a lot of ways -- and the ways in which he didn't were a complete opacity to Suoh. He suspected Nokoru knew more about that than he was telling, but then, he always suspected Nokoru knew more than he was telling, and he was generally right.  
  
Suoh stole a glance over at his friend. No, not friend; more than that. Daimyou. Lord, protected and center of loyalty -- although Suoh knew in his heart Nokoru would never use his position as such. Any real authority Kaichou held over him was entirely mutual and far subtler than any stated orders. Suoh was yet another thing Nokoru had that even the richest of men could never hope for -- Takamura bodyguards were prized the world over, but could not be hired; they chose their own charges.  
  
Virtually since birth, Suoh had been trained, as the heir to the Takamura legacy, as a bodyguard and old-style ninja. He was at least 3rd dan in all of the major styles of unarmed martial arts and in many of the minor ones; and in addition held titles in yumiya -- archery -- and various forms of swordplay and kunai. He was an adept lockpick and accomplished sprinter, and at the age of eleven had the stamina of a man of twice his years. All because at some point in his life, he was going to be a bodyguard to someone very important.  
  
"The someone you will meet someday," was the way his mother had put it.  
  
That was Nokoru.  
  
Before meeting the heir to the Imonoyama fortune, Suoh had been fairly ambivalent about the idea of putting his life on the line for someone else's. He had had the audacity to question it once, when very young, and had more or less been treated to a ten hour training session as a punishment; regardless of his personal feelings on the matter, he was sternly informed that it was his duty and he would not shirk it. After encountering Nokoru, though, Suoh found that mostly what he felt was... relief. Relief that the person he was destined to protect even at the cost of his own life was kind and quick-witted and altogether someone worth protecting. He had realized then that there must have been some fear lurking deep beneath the surface that he'd wind up stuck to some sheep-eyed girl out of a feeling that he had to shield her from the world; of course, he hadn't known at that point that he had quite a job ahead of him protecting Kaichou from himself, but even that he didn't mind so much. Kaichou was quite capable of taking care of himself in ways other than the dangerously physical, and even his recklessness in that might have been partly based on the idea that Suoh was willing to do things like jump out a third story window after him as he went climbing trees to catch a silk stocking blown there by the wind.  
  
Nokoru was beginning to droop beside him. Akira was already asleep across the aisle, curled up in his own spot and encroaching on the neighboring empty seat; Suoh had poked at Kaichou for hours in the Shotoubu Gakuseikai until he'd gotten the required half-pile of paperwork done before the trip began, and Kaichou had apparently missed some rather important naps. By the time the airline reservations had been made and everyone's parents placated, it was rather late at night. Suoh was wide awake. He was quite capable of staying up several days running if he had to; the idea didn't make him terribly happy, but it was better than leaving Kaichou entirely unsupervised. Suoh could also sleep more or less with one eye open if he had to, to keep Nokoru from doing something foolish without taking his two companions with him. It occurred to him then that Kaichou might not have been sleeping well to begin with -- when an idea caught Nokoru's fancy, it latched on with grappling hooks and did not like letting go, not even to let him rest.  
  
Suoh eyed his Kaichou and decided that nothing was likely to happen on an airplane without some prior warning, and that this was therefore a good time to take a light nap. God only knew what was going to happen when the plane landed in America... he allowed himself to slip into a relaxed state, a pale imitation of real sleep, but it would do, with eyes closed but ears open. Suoh sat that way quite peacefully for some indeterminate time, ignoring the other passengers and the flight attendants, until he was nudged quietly out of his doze by a warm weight against his shoulder. Mildly curious as to what it was, he turned his head and wound up sniffling blond hairs away from his nose.  
  
The slight stirring woke Kaichou as well. He took stock of his surroundings and lifted himself upright against his seat back. "Sumimasen, Suoh," he murmured with sleepy eyes, blinking thick and black, then opening just enough to show the glint of restless cerulean. "I didn't mean to."  
  
Nokoru turned away to blink at the seat in front of him, not even bothering to stretch. With eyes half-lidded like that, the dark sweep of eyelashes looked solid all the way across, providing an unconscious veil across his gaze. Jet all the way around that blue contrasted sharply with his pale face and thick golden hair; by all rights it should have looked girlish but somehow it didn't. Kaichou was adorable and he knew it, and the females of the CLAMP Campus picked up on that. Yet for all of his admirers and cheerful acquaintances, when it came to a true personal life, Suoh and Akira were his entire world. The girls saw him and wanted him because he was rich and brilliant and Imonoyama Nokoru, not because he was Nokoru, a sparkling young man who could not live without helping others. To Suoh, he was more than just a charge; and even the word 'Kaichou' had taken on so many more meanings than the ones in the dictionary. There was a sort of camaraderie between them that Suoh had never felt for anyone else; the closest he had come outside the small Gakuseikai circle was what he felt for Nagisa, and even that was different. That was love.  
  
Had Suoh bothered to think it through more thoroughly, he might have called that bond between himself and his Kaichou 'love' as well, albeit of a different kind. Looking over at Kaichou as he was, slightly disheveled, with artfully rumpled hair and a face that could charm the most cold- hearted pariah the world had to offer, tended to send some of the same thoughts running through his head that spending time with Nagisa did.  
  
I would move mountains for Kaichou, he thought, marvelling at himself for being that certain about it. And if there was anyone else who would both find him a good reason to move a mountain and an even better way to do it, it would be Kaichou.  
  
Suoh closed his eyes and settled back in his seat. "Kore mo ii," he said with a shrug, deliberately sending the matter deep into the territory of No Big Deal. "I don't really care."  
  
With a slight turn of his head and a small "n?" sort of noise, Nokoru sat up again. Suoh was not a very demonstrative person, as he well knew; affection for him was more implied by the fact that Suoh regularly spoke more than was strictly necessary to get his message across. Regardless of the trust and care Takamura-kouhai had invested in Nokoru, he would not normally be comfortable letting Kaichou snooze on his shoulder in public.  
  
"Are you sure?" Nokoru asked curiously.  
  
"I said I didn't care, na?" Suoh responded, making a great show of wanting to go back to his nap.  
  
Nokoru allowed himself a small smile. "Wakatta. Thank you, Suoh," he added gratefully. Suoh gave him an inarticulate sort of yes-I-heard-you-I'm- going-to-sleep-now grumble as an answer. The Student Body President of the entire CLAMP Campus elementary school curled his golden head softly into the warm curve of his bodyguard's neck and let the tension flow through his body and drip right out of his fingertips. This lasted a long moment before Suoh decided that his kaichou's skull was indeed what was making his fingers tingle, pressing against an unfortunate bone in his shoulder, and shifted his arm; Nokoru expected to be dislodged entirely and prepared to pull away gracefully, but was instead pleasantly surprised to feel Suoh work his hand across the back of the airline seat and slide it comfortably around his side. Nokoru sighed contentedly and, so comforted, drifted swiftly back to sleep.  
  
How does Kaichou do that? Suoh wondered, watching Nokoru drop off like a lightbulb winking out when its switch has been thrown. It must have been a talent he'd acquired the semester he'd decided napping was the easiest way to avoid his paperwork. All he had to do was unroll a futon on the floor of the Gakuseikai and curl up in angelic slumber and even Suoh couldn't always bring himself to wake Kaichou up. On occasion, the situation was dire enough Suoh knelt down and shook Sleeping Beauty until he came back to consciousness, but generally the sheer waves of adorability Nokoru emitted while asleep had earned him an hour or two of respite.  
  
Suoh quelled the urge to shake his head in wonderment. How on Earth he had ended up attached to the world's most brilliant, charming weasel, he had no idea.  
  
Well... that wasn't true. Suoh, in fact, had a very clear idea of how it had happened. When he was in the third grade, way back in the mists of time, Nokoru had decided he wanted to be friends. Suoh had had absolutely no such intentions -- exactly the opposite, as a matter of fact; he'd wanted nothing at all to do with the Imonoyama boy -- but Nokoru's inexplicably obstinate goodwill had, as always, won that battle, at least temporarily... and that tiny temporary truce was exactly long enough to get Nokoru kidnapped and Suoh dragged along for the ride. Now, granted, Nokoru was incapable of keeping himself out of hot water for more than a day or two at a time, but that one wasn't his fault; someone else had decided they wanted his genius for themselves and had underestimated exactly how pig- headed Kaichou could be about making a deal. Fortunately, they also had no idea at all what sort of a terror Suoh was, even at age eight, and between his combat skills and Kaichou's wits the two of them had almost managed escape when Nokoru's captor decided to make a last-ditch effort at keeping them there.  
  
Suoh could remember that moment as if it had happened only the day before. The picture was etched into the surface of his mind permanently. He saw the gun, glinting in the sun that beat hotly down on the roof of the house beneath their feet; he heard the woman's cries as she screamed bloody murder down on Suoh's head, just for being in the way. And then without a word, Nokoru was angry and between the two of them, just before she pulled the trigger--  
  
That instant, the single instant of time when the fine spray of blood tinted the air pink for just a moment and Nokoru fell back against him, was going to stay with Takamura Suoh forever. He'd had little idea what was happening at that point, knowing mostly that his sempai was bleeding and he hadn't been able to do anything about it, and of course that the two of them were still in a great deal of danger. But he had been well aware of the feeling that flashed through him as Nokoru toppled against him, a year older but still smaller and slighter, of souls touching and locking and destiny finally clicking into place; and what it said to Suoh was simply, this is it.  
  
When Suoh's self had come back to the front, Nokoru was curled into a curve before him, against his knee, blood running down his arm from where the bullet had nicked him, and the boy was apologizing. Suoh heard the words, "I'm sorry," and the first thing he had wanted to do was gawk and yell, "Sorry?!" right back at his sempai while shaking him sharply. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that reaction had been squashed due to time; not only would that not have been good for Nokoru's arm wound, but he probably would have mistaken Suoh's meaning. Far from being incredulous that Nokoru had gotten him into that much trouble and was only then apologizing, Takamura Suoh had been completely flabbergasted that he had apologized at all. Scattered phrases about taking a shot for him and still feeling he had done Suoh wrong had scrambled around the second grader's mind for a moment before events had swept them away. All Suoh could do was hold him tight and safe and try to stop the bleeding without exposing him to too much danger.  
  
The short time between that one shot and the arrival of their escape vehicle -- of all the insane ways Nokoru had conceived of to summon rescue, the penguin balloon had to be the most esoterically improbable -- had to have been the longest minutes of Suoh's life. He hadn't been scared for himself. He'd been scared for Nokoru.  
  
Not only had that day resulted in some of the most positively stomach- churning moments of Suoh's existence, it had resulted in some of the most satisfying. After the fact, of course. During the fact he hadn't had time to properly appreciate them. He personally had taken Imonoyama Nokoru off- guard no less than twice. Completely and honestly surprised him. Better yet, Suoh had rendered Nokoru speechless -- well, close enough, at any rate. The first time, the pint-sized ninja wonder had reduced him to the point where he was only parroting the last thing Suoh had said; it didn't last long, but thinking back on that after having known Kaichou for a few months, Suoh'd had a vastly better comprehension of what it took to get him there in the first place.  
  
The second time... that was even better. That second time was... was... it had felt like another part of destiny falling into place. Just something right.  
  
"...Takamura-kun... I'm sorry... I won't try to get close to you again." Nokoru turned and looked at him with those gentle blue eyes, half- closed in chagrin and glossed with sadness. Loneliness. Just nine years old and already Imonoyama-sempai understood that he would walk by himself for the rest of his life, because to do otherwise would to put anyone he befriended in danger. He wanted anything but that.  
  
Suoh gazed back for but a moment. Nokoru meant that; he meant everything he said. What he had to say, he would say now.  
  
"No." Very calmly, the words came. Suoh even put on a small smile to match Nokoru's melancholy one. "I will be by your side."  
  
"...what?" Imonoyama-sempai's eyes grew very round and though the expression 'confused' never entered the picture, several others did. Hope surfaced briefly, followed by a cherubic sort of resigned look that Suoh took to signify Nokoru was going to try to talk him out of his foolish idea rather shortly. Obviously, if he had ever heard of the Takamura family, he didn't remember why or from where.  
  
"You seem to be the 'someone I will meet one day'," Suoh said quietly. He sounded more uncertain than he felt; there was no seem about it at all. "So I will always..."  
  
Imonoyama-sempai caught his breath for a moment, lips parted to begin an argument that didn't seem to be coming. The sky behind him was a steadily brightening blue, scattered with wisps of cloud with their undersides highlighted in red and orange as the sun began to rise. Early light brushed Nokoru's hair as well, making it glow straight gold.  
  
"...protect you," Suoh finished firmly, when he was sure Nokoru wasn't going to fight him on it or keel over from surprise.  
  
The cavalcade of emotion cascaded over Imonoyama-sempai's features again, and suddenly Suoh realized that he was either watching Nokoru far more closely than he had been or he was developing a knack for reading the other boy; to an outside observer, the mysterious half-smile the older boy wore would not appear to have changed much. But Suoh saw the sky-blue in his eyes grow darker as the gaze that seemed to be directed at his companion really turned inside to question self and regain its former brightness as the query found an answer and Nokoru emerged from the depths of his heart once more....  
  
Then the angel-eyes had turned back to Suoh for real, and the gratitude within took any uncertainty left about his choice of charge and wiped it away, and made the entire night worth the hell it had been.  
  
Kaichou was far from an angel, of course. If he had a halo over his head, it was only because it was propped up on his horns. Nokoru was, hands down, the most devious, manipulative little schemer twelve years of practice and something like two hundred IQ points could produce. But he was a gentleman when he held Suoh's life in his hands; as a Takamura, as a secretary and as a friend, Suoh belonged to him, whether he knew it or not.  
  
Nokoru stirred vaguely against his side and reminded Suoh that after making such a show of wanting his nap, he should probably actually take one. He sighed and leaned his head against Kaichou's thick, soft hair; he knew Kaichou appreciated this sort of thing, even if Suoh never would have indulged him if he couldn't claim that he was asleep and it didn't count if anyone happened to catch him. From careful observation, Suoh had figured that Nokoru experienced life in a state as close to total synthesesia as you could come without making it a medical condition; and adding to it, he was a traditional sensualist with absolutely no sense of personal embarrassment. No matter what sort of insane activity Nokoru wanted his friends to help him in, so long as Kaichou was actually present or actively speaking in favor of it, no one ever thought it laughable. Which was generally why Nokoru was capable of verbalizing many, many things Suoh would have turned some very interesting shades of red attempting to get out, and in his usual poetically descriptive manner as well. Nokoru would not have hesitated to describe his current position as within a warm, comforting embrace; Suoh would be loath to admit he had ever been caught in said position in the first place. However -- Suoh slid his eyes over to where Ijyuin was still coiled compactly up in his seat -- so long as there were no witnesses who could possibly carry this back to the CLAMP Campus....  
  
He shifted his cheek so that Kaichou's hair wasn't tickling his nose and counseled himself to relax. Nokoru felt like a rag doll beneath his hand; whatever dreams he was having were pleasant, and he must have considered himself completely safe. Truth be told, Suoh himself felt safest this way. With his charge curled against him like this, literally within his grasp, Suoh could be absolutely certain that nothing would happen to him, and that was the most security he could ever hope for.  
  
Holding onto that sense of stability, Suoh felt himself slipping under the veil of consciousness, dropping off truly for the first time in how many hours? He wasn't sure. Something about traveling with Kaichou did not a relaxed atmosphere create. Possibly his habit of making all calls and buying all tickets at the very last possible minute. But that was all over, until they left America at any rate, and they were safely cruising at thirty-five thousand feet over the open ocean... beautiful blue water, just like his eyes... and it was dark outside the tiny window at his elbow, and Suoh was tired.  
  
With one arm wrapped around his Kaichou and his head pillowed on Nokoru's wheat-gold hair, Takamura Suoh, bodyguard, ninja and Student Body Secretary of the entire CLAMP Elementary School, fell peacefully asleep. 


End file.
